Accountability. A safeguard against our worst impulses.
Public schools have accountability measures in place so that parents and stakeholders can demand an adequate education. The ability to hold a school liable to a certain standard is rare in education and needs to be protected. Not only are common schools accountable to people, but force a type of accountability between those who participate. As I mentioned in the last post, when parents advocate for a school to improve the benefits often go beyond their individual children. The Bible’s call to “love your neighbor as yourself” is an easy guide here. For this reason Christians should consider moving past empty platitudes of support for public schools and enroll their children. Another word for this is submission.
I believe strongly in the need for every person on this earth to submit to another. I’ve seen it in myself and others; the draw to believe that you are correct in all things is too powerful. How many times have I been convinced to trust my instincts just to look like a fool when a little perspective is given. We NEED to have people over us in some form or another to create a check against our insatiable egos. The Aubrey–Maturin series of fictional books, popularized by the movie Master and Commander, helped me understand my conviction better.
Stephen Maturin, a surgeon on a ship captained by Jack Aubrey, observed the dangerous effects of authority on Jack. He makes the case that as post-captains are promoted to commodores, commodores to rear-admirals, and so on, they become less of themselves and start to act how someone in that position “should” act. His own hatred for tyrants (in the novel, Napoleon being the chief tyrant) led Stephen to distrust power’s draw as a type of cancer. I want to have the same healthy distrust of myself when given influence, and would like to advocate for policies that distribute and check power.
Ideally all children would be treated similarly in school: provided the resources they need to achieve a common threshold signified via a diploma. In practice, however, children are held to different standards based on biases, cost limitations and ignorance. Special education is the case study here. First, bias: boys outnumber girls in special education classes by a 2:1 margin (at least in Georgia). Best evidence we have is that teachers have gendered assumptions about “good” and “bad” behavior, which labels more boys as having a disability and undercounts girls. Second, cost limitations: the brutal truth is that providing an adequate education for students with disabilities is costly. Special education teachers in districts serving more low-income kids are paid less than their peers in wealthier districts. Lower pay often means higher turnover and worse service, as newer teachers are less effective than experienced instructors. Finally ignorance: research shows that low-income kids are over-identified for special education. Frankly it looks like school folks in America really can’t tell when a child is struggling in school if it’s because they have a learning disability or if they’re just poor.
But here’s the good news! In this landscape parents are not left to their own devices but can appeal to legal and institutional avenues to advocate for additional resources/support for their children. Laws and state rules help ensure that parents and stakeholders can appeal decisions, sue for services, and vote out school board members that refuse to help. Accountability!
Advocates for school choice have downplayed the role of state accountability in an attempt to lift parent power. The preferred policy, school vouchers, would give parents “their share” of school funding to take to private schools or homeschool. It is only the public school that can guarantee hard-fought protections for students with disabilities, however. Taking a voucher requires a parent to refuse federal protections from discrimination. I refuse to believe in any “parent empowerment” that requires them to trade their child’s rights away at the chance at a good private school.
In a world where there is no state accountability for children’s education, an individual private school’s inability (or lack of desire) to educate a child would send them into the wilderness where parental resources are the only safety net. If a child has disabilities that a private institution cannot address, for instance, what is the parent’s recourse? Hopefully there is another school in driving distance that serves the child well? This is a hypothetical that offers nothing to rural communities, by the way.
I’m living under no illusions: the history (and current state) of public education’s treatment of students with disabilities is awful. I wrote a whole report about it. But here again I would argue that this fact makes the case for more state oversight, not less. We must raise the level of support for all vulnerable students, but that would require making accountability levers accessible to all and making school responses quick, flexible and robust.
I want to pause here to acknowledge that you might read these arguments as a false choice—why presuppose that there are only two possible futures with either a healthy public school sector or an entirely privatized system? First, supporters of private schooling have made gains nationwide arguing for the aforementioned use of public dollars to pay for private education. Every year I encounter a bill that will enlarge whatever preferred policy will achieve these ends. Second, and related to the first, is the growing sentiment that the only accountability schools should be held to is parental accountability. This view is used to argue that the state has no business in the role of educating children. Finally, the current compromise, if we can call it that, between advocates for public schools and school choice folks is that the state can finance private school education as long as there is a clear harm against a child in her current (public) schooling. As I survey the history of public schooling, and the harms it has caused children, parents and communities, there are people who I can easily see have a claim to fight for an escape from the institution. But these folks are also traditionally not who will (or can) make use of school choice.
Research shows that the primary recipients of school vouchers are people who never attended a public school. It is my own people, white evangelical protestants, who stand at the front lines in opposition to adequately resourced public schools. I want to explore why in future posts, and propose a new vision of the Christian’s role in public policy.
-Stephen